GONE TO THE BIRDS

Manila Bulletin
Travel supplement

GONE TO THE BIRDS
Tourism soars as the DOT promotes birdwatching in the Philippines
Text by Alex Icasiano III

At the precise moment when one rests on a
plane seat and realizes that the World Travel Market in London
is 14 hours away, one immediately gains a propensity, much
like those who are at the final moments of their life, to
recall what the previous hours have been like. In particular,
naturally, if the past hours had involved the anxious wait
for a last-minute United Kingdom visa, running a span of road
in excess of two blocks to reclaim an illegally parked vehicle,
and a strange, if not entirely uninformed, tale of Nostradamus
and Barack Obama told by the very same man who had towed the
vehicle you sought ot regain possession of. With many a sigh
and a signing of immigration cards, I looked forward to the
considerable flight time; confident that, upon crossing the
dateline and arriving in London, I will have traveled back
in time to the day before and recovered 8 of the lost hours
of my life.

Group photo during the book launching
at Grosvenor Square's Marriot Hotel in London

Market Marketing

London, even at this time of the year, is
a city that is especially alive with the human spirit despite
the frigid weather and the cold stone of its ancient buildings.
With a teeming and vibrant population, it might appear unsurprising
then for the department of Tourism to focus part of its efforts
in promoting the Philippines as a destination and participating
in the World Travel Market. Indeed, residents of the UK have
what seems to be a constant predilection for traveling and,
seeing as how they tend to gravitate towards more temperate
climates, with Asian countries and their respective beaches
and tropical resorts being at the forefront of the destination
lists, there is no better time to direct their attention towards
the Philippines.

The World Travel market, which is held on
an annual basis in the London Docklands’ massive convention
center, ExCel, appears very much like the flea markets you
might see in the city; or, perhaps more accurately, like the
bazaars that seem to manifest around each corner as the last
season of the year approaches. Whereas in a bazaar you might
have any manner of produce, meats, rugs, and hawkers, a Travel
Market will have cities, beaches, ruins, and travel agents.
The similarities of both these places of commerce, however
lies in the innumerable people who come to buy, sell, trade,
and tell stories of the countries they represent. The Philippines,
of course, has no lack of stories to tell.

“Tourism is the sunrise industry of
the country in the next 20 years. For me, ecotourism is the
sunrise product of the country,” claims Tourism Secretary
Ace Durano. “In terms of volume, this year we’ll
be reaching up to 85,000 to 88,000 [visitors] from this market,
until the end of the year. And that has been an 18% growth
year on year for the past 3 years; and despite the financial
crisis here, we project a 10 percent growth this year compared
to last year.”

Quite a promising number, and it does appear
as though the visitor count could increase admirably over
the coming months. “I have seen the interest and growth
[of Philippine tourism] here. I have seen how the transactions
increased,” says Philippine Ambassador to the UK Edgardo
Espiritu. “When I started here, we were doing 37 transactions
a day. Now we’re doing 250.”

The Department of Tourism has, alongside
tour operators in the country, invested a great deal of effort
in promoting the Philippines as a holiday destination, establishing
its presence in France and Russia earlier this year. Its goal
is to keep ties with nations that it visits and use a more
focused approach by marketing the Philippines to travel organizations
on a per country basis, thus achieving better results than
promotions of a broader sort.

Laying the Nest Egg

Secretary Ace Durano met with organizers
of the UK Bird Fair in Cambridge

While that in itself may sound like an effective
way to endorse the country as a tourist attraction, the DOT
has decided to add a bit more to entice UK residents to fly
to the Philippines by highlighting its birdwatching sites,
a tourist attraction with possibilities that have, until recently,
never been tapped to its utmost potential. It has come to
the DOT’s attention that the UK has long been a prime
market for this particular hobby, having a substantial number
of avid birdwatchers and an annual convention called Birdfair
regarded as the largest of its kind worldwide. “If the
Philippines has the highest concentration per kilometer of
bird species, I have to say that the UK has the highest concentration
of birders per square kilometer. It’s the perfect match
for this product of ours,” remarks Durano. “It
came out that birdwatching is the right product for this market;
to add value, to add dimension to the Philippines as a tourist
destination. Something that makes us stand out.”

Of the 600 bird species that can be found
in the Philippines, 200 are endemic; which is to say that
these certain species can only be found in the country alone.
That sort of abundance, diversity, and perhaps even the possibility
of catching an as yet undocumented avian species on film is
something that could give a country full of birdwatching enthusiasts
reason enough to visit. In anticipation of the influx of birdwatchers,
the DOT, together with local government units, has taken measures
to establish tourist centers in 13 areas including sites in
Palawan, Pangasinan, Subic, and Cavite, among others, with
an eye towards developing more as the demand increases.

In relation to this thrust, the Philippines
has become a sponsor of the UK’s Wetlands Center, a
reserve founded specifically to nurture avian life right in
the London area. Tourism attaché Ramon “Chicoy”
Enerio officially signed an agreement with the center, effectively
giving the department of Tourism access to a dedicated market
and allowing it to promote its featured sites and activities
related to birdwatching in the center’s publications.

Enerio has raised interest in the city by
putting up ads in London’s famed double decker buses.
The buses tour London’s streets, sporting a fetching
profile of the Philippine Eagle, one of the species unique
to the country. “We advertised in buses, national newspapers;
we also advertised in an email campaign,” reveals Enerio.
The move is certain to help spread awareness of the Philippines’
newest addition to its tourist attractions. True enough, during
the brief time that was spent in London, it would have been
an impossibility not to have noticed the buses.

Also, in a collaborative effort, the DOT,
The Wild Bird Club of the Philippines, and the outdoor gear
retail store R.O.X., released the first volume of Birdwatching
in the Philippines, a detailed guidebook to birding around
the country. Featuring the myriad species found in various
local sites, the book was introduced to the UK market in a
launch held at Grosvenor Square’s Marriot Hotel where
the audience was given a glimpse of the Philippine birdwatching
scene.

There and Back Again

Seeing as how getting to London simply wasn’t
a walk in the Hyde Park, one finds that the patience that
the Department of Tourism’s Team London possesses far
exceeds that which could be considered humanly possible. Flying
the people who made up the Philippine contingent off to the
UK requires quite a bit more than happy thoughts and some
fairy dust but, in remarkable fashion, they had managed to
see us to London and back. Upon our return, I again lost the
hours I had regained but, at this point, it had become tie
well spent.